Oprah Winfrey is a front-runner to receive an Oscar nomination for her recent performance in Lee Daniel's "The Butler," playing an alcoholic mother and wife to a lifetime butler.

But playing a mother on screen and being one in real life are two very different things.

The media mogul and one of the richest women in the world never had children and explains why in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter

"If I had kids, my kids would hate me," Winfrey, 59, told THR. "They would have ended up on the equivalent of the "Oprah" show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would've probably been them."

Indeed, while best friend Gayle King was dreaming of the day she'd have children, Winfrey had her sights set on different goals growing up.

"Gayle was the kind of kid who, in seventh-grade home ec class, was writing down her name and the names of her children," Winfrey said of business associate King, 58, who has two children. "While she was having those kind of daydreams, I was having daydreams about how I could be Martin Luther King."